And so it goes...

So I know I've been bad about updates. Sometimes you are in the mood for updates and sometimes you aren't. I've been stressing a LOT about money lately but that seems like its finally working itself out. I have a roomate settled in and that is going well. I'm finally getting a handle on what it will cost to manage the air temperture here (aka NOT cheap).

I've begun the process of looking for a new car since the Audi is finally dying. I've had that car for just over 6 years now. I've had it for just over 1/5 of my life. I've had it through the last two years of college, through my entire coming out process, through the crazy year that was my senior year, through the time I worked in Boston, all the places I've lived in Worcester and Webster. It's funny how things can become a part of you. I've had the same CD in slot 3 of the 6-disk changer for probably 90% of the time that I've had the car; Vertical Horizon "Everything You Want". It's the car that took me to Hampton Beach for excursions with Patrick, Mary, Sare, Jen and the rest of the gang. It's the car that took me camping in Vermont. It's the car that took me to Canada with Colin. It's the car that took me to New York City twice to perform Off-Off Broadway. I've gone on so many road trips in that car (one of the reasons that I put an average of 17,000 miles a year on it, although the average was probably much higher before the last few years). That car is the reason for creating "Audi Privileges" ;) I have so many memories in that car its hard to say goodbye.

Other changes are happening too. At work I've moved my office. I moved upstairs to the cubes behind the main office area. The benefits to this is that I'm now closer to the rest of my team, I get a resonable temperture (70 degrees instead of 82 degrees), I get sunlight, and best of all I get cell reception. The negative is that I'm now closer to the rest of my team (mostly cuz they can be LOUD! hehe), and that I don't have the benefit of being able to close more door or ask my officemate to leave for a short while to allow me to make a phone call or talk with someone in the office privately. The noise aspect I will hopefuly take care of with my brand new pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones. *grin* Also a plus is that we just got brand new black Aeron chairs. These are THE most comfortable chairs you have ever sat on.

Well that's all I have for now. I'll be sure to update more as I can.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'm going to be an uncle. My sister is having a baby and it'll be due in January. This will DEFINITELY take a bit of getting used to.

TTFN

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Fun in the woods

Well this weekend I spent some time up in the mountains in NH with Booj. I went up Friday night and we had a few drinks and then we headed back to his place. He's got a great house right on the lake. We went out back to the dock to see the lake. The water was completely placid and a light fog was on the surface. The stars were beautiful. You could even see the Milky Way among the stars. It was incredible and something I always love to look at when I'm out camping. The other thing that was wonderful was the absolute silence. There wasn't any noise from any motors or anything man-made. It was beautifully, wonderfuly quiet. I dipped my toes into the water and it was so warm; it was like bath water. Unfortunately we never had time this weekend to go for a swim. After chatting for a bit we went to bed since we had an early day in store.

I woke up to a wondefully cooked breakfast by Tom's mom. We then drove over to North Conway and hiked up Tuckerman's Ravine. We hiked the three miles up to the base of the bowl over a two hour period, four hours total for the six mile round trip. We made it up all the way with only a bit of rain sprinkling. We started down the mountain and got about 1/3 of the way down when the skies opened up. By the time we got to the bottom we were both soaked to the core.

All in all a pretty good time, although I have to say I hurt in so many places right now. It was painful just to get up this morning, hehe. My legs are sore, my back is sore, my arms are sore. Can't wait until I can do it again! :)

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And the fight continues...

Well another page has been written in the history of the gay marriage saga. Yesterday, June 10, 2006, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) unanimously voted to certify the ballot initiative that will be voted on at tomorrow's Constitional Convention (ConCon).

Some people might not like what I'm about to say, and I find myself in the weird position of being supportive of something I don't particularly like. Personally I feel that the SJC made the right decision in certifying the ballot. That doesn't mean I like the ballot, or that I don't think that there are plenty of other things wrong with it.

For those that don't know what I'm talking about, the ballot initiative in question is one that seeks to amend the MA Constitution to state that Marriage will be defined as being between one man and one woman. I'll skip over the drama and scandal of the process that led to getting the signatures and get to the part of the issue that was taken to the SJC.

This whole issue revolves around the certification of the ballot question. All voter ballot initiatives need to be certified by the Attourney General in order to get put on the ballot. GLAD tried to block this certifcation citing that the MA Constitution states that you cannot seek to overturn a judicial judgement by a ballot initiative. The rationale for this is so you can't run to the voters every time you don't like a decision handed down by the courts. All well and good, right? Sounds like a fairly reasonable argument to block the initiative. Well, Thomas Reilly (MA AG) certified it saying that the rule cited by GLAD didn't apply in this case. GLAD then sued Reilly and the decision was brought to the SJC. As you see now the SJC supported the certification of the ballot.

I want to see this ballot be defeated just as much as anyone but I really don't think it was wise to try to attack it in this way. The key difference that makes this ballot certifiable is that it seeks to ammend the constitution. It seeks to change the fundamental law and basis for the SJC decision. If the ballot was simply "Vote yes to overturn the SJC decision", I'd agree with GLAD 100%, but that's not the case. If this case had been decided against the ballot, there would have been far reaching implications any time the court made a ruling based on the existing code of laws and someone didn't want the laws changed for future rulings. I feel that every time we get to close to the "win at any costs" mentality where we are willing to find any loophole and exploit any opportunity to our advantage we become just a little bit more like the people we say we are opposing. It only gives the other side rational arguments against us.

I'm hoping for a miracle tomorrow so that we somehow get 151 people to vote no on the ballot and it gets wiped out for good. Personally, I think the mantra of some representatives to "let the people vote" is cowardly and naively simplistic. The point of the ConCon is not to simply rubberstamp any ballot and send it to the voters. If its simply a matter of "let the people vote" then voter initiatives would simply be done by signature drives. The ConCon is there as a check and balance to the voter initiative process. The legislaters should vote their hearts and the concience and vote an initiative through on its merits. If they feel that its a good law or at least one they agree is worthwhile, then pass it on to the voters. If they feel it is bad law or that it is not in the best interest of the commenwealth they should vote it down and doing so does not deny the voters their rights. It simply proves that there is not enough support for the measure that they are trying to pass.

I truly doubt that the measure will be blocked tomorrow and it will at least go to the 2007 ConCon. Maybe by that time we'll have the votes to kill it, maybe not. I just hope that by 2008, with 4 years of same-sex marriages that haven't caused the destruction of civilization, that maybe we'll have enough voter support to kill this measure, once and for all. Part of me wants this to go to the voters just for the strength that would come from winning on a voter ballot question. It would cement the fact that its a minority that has the largest problem with same-sex marriage and take the wind out of the sails of further attempts to recind the existing right of same-sex couples to marry.

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Gym Update

Sorry for no update yesterday but I was swamped at work and was too tired to put it up when I got home.

In short I back-slid a bit back up to 187.5. It's probably a combination of the holiday and not going to the gym much last week. I didn't go on Tuesday since it was the day after hosting my party and after cleaning up I just didn't feel like hitting the gym. Wednesday and Thursday my stomach was not feeling well at all so I skipped those days. Friday was a reduced workout because I hit a wall earlier on and didn't want to push it and cause problems. Saturday was a fraternity party and Sunday was just a lazy day. Yesterday I hit 3 miles again, today I hit 2. I think with not running for a week the 3 miles yesterday was a bit much to start with which is why I ran out of steam today. Hopefully I can ramp back up by weeks end back to where I was, and hopefully the weight gain will be very temporary and will come off as easy as it went on.

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Roommate found!

Well, one very large weight is off my shoulder. I finally found a more permanent roommate. Living with Jon was great but alas, he had this odd need to live in Boston. Something about being near where he worked and within walking distance to the T as well as near all sorts of fun places to go? Some kind of nonsense like that. :) At any rate, thanks Jon for being a great roomie.

So as of today I have a new roommate, Carlos. He's working at UMass Med. Hopefully this will work out in the long term so I don't have to worry about finding a new roommate anytime soon, or at least long enough so I can put aside the necessary reserve to not be desperate for a new roommate should I need to find one.

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Happy Independance Day

Well last night's party was a complete success. It was great to have so many good friends over to share the good times. Remby, as promised, brought over two George Forman grills to help grill up all the food. What I didn't realize is that he was going to bring over the indoor/outdoor bbq grill as seen to the left. Seriosly, this thing is amazing and I'm going to have to get one.

The party wrapped up at 2:15 AM and a good time was had by all.

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Monday Report

So I cheated last week. No, not with food. Well, ok, not much with food, but as I said before, giving in on occasion prevents going overboard and binging later. For the most part I've been doing great at eating better and eating smaller portions at all meals.

No, what I cheated on was my resolution to not step on the scale except for Monday due to the variable nature of weight fluctuation. If I take my weight at the same time and day every week, I'm more likely to get a representative trend of where my weight is. Well, on Friday I stepped on the scale and I was extremely happy. I had dropped to 184! Now that is fantastic. Seeing that led me to weight myself this weekend and I was upset to see I was at 188.5. Today at my normal time to weigh in, I stepped on the scale for the moment of truth. I was 186, which just proves that I should stick to my resolution of only weighing myself once a week.

So I'm currently 186, 36" waist, 36.5" stomach. As you can see I've only lost a pound and no change since last week on the tummy area. I'm not too worried because I can visibly see the progress at this point. Everything is tightening up, my arms are filling out a bit, the love handles are disappearing, my chest is beginning to have some definition and the gut is definitely shrinking, even if not measurably. Overall, I feel the best I've felt in ages and I feel good when I look in the mirror, and believe me, my bathroom mirror doesn't hide anything. The mirror is 68" wide and 36" tall. The thing is brutally honest and Dani and I both agree that it is quite the motivating partner in our workout routines.

If I continue to lose weight at this rate (1 lb/week) I'll only be 179 by August 19th, but I'll be happy with that. At this rate I'll hit my target on October 9th. I'm hoping that I'm hitting a plateau right now and that it'll come off a bit faster over the next few weeks but I'm not going to push it. I want to do this safely and slowly so that not only am I healthy but I can more easily keep the weight off. It's important that whatever I do to take the weight off be a full lifestyle change. I can never go back to eating the portion sizes that I used to and not exercising several times a week. I have to realize that I'm not a teenager with an insatiable metabolism any more. My goal is to be able to drop to 3 miles plus weights/3 times a week to maintain my target weight. During the winter holidays I'll try to ramp back up to 5 days a week just to keep ahead of the winter weight gain (as well as being smart at holiday dinners and parties).

At this point I'm very happy with my progress and now its just a matter of sticking with it. I did 6 days of excersize last week. I even did a session on Saturday. I was very motivated and tempted to hit the gym on Sunday but wanted to make sure I gave myself at least one full day of rest, whether I felt I needed it or not. I don't want to push myself too hard or too fast. "Slow but sure" is my guiding principle here.

Well that's all for today. I have to prep for my BYOBBQ party!

UPDATE: One other thing I should mention is that at 179 lbs I will have met the larger goal of moving to the "normal" range of BMI scores; 179 is a 24.9, "overweight" starts at 25. I am currently at 25.9 right now with 186. My target weight of 172 is a 24 BMI which is still the upper end of the "normal" BMI range, but I'm very comfortable with that weight. I think that weight is very healthy for my body type. I will of course be bringing all of this up with my doctor at my yearly physical in September.

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